Bruce Power receives Ontario Business Achievement Award for Sustainability

Bruce Power has been named the 2016 recipient of the Ontario Business Achievement Award for Sustainability.

The award, presented at a gala event Tuesday in Toronto, goes to ‘a business that has demonstrated that being a leader in sustainability makes good business sense.’

“We are honoured and, frankly, humbled to receive this award, and we accept it on behalf of our 4,000 employees who proudly make it their mission each and every day to safely provide the province with clean, reliable, low-cost electricity while at the same time maintaining a healthy environment,” said James Scongack, vice-president of corporate affairs at Bruce Power.

The annual Ontario Business Achievement Awards, hosted by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, provide an opportunity to shine a light on business success in the province. Over the past 34 years, they have become the premiere business excellence awards in Ontario.

Bruce Power has demonstrated that sustainability and good business are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, they often go hand-in-hand.

The company’s return of four dormant nuclear units to service between 2003 and 2012, provided 70 per cent of the power the province needed to shut down Ontario’s coal stations, dramatically improving the quality of Ontario’s air. The return of the Bruce Power reactors added 3,000 megawatts of carbon-free electricity to Ontario’s grid, keeping harmful emissions out of the atmosphere and cleaning the air we breathe.

“Closing coal-fired power plants represents one of the largest greenhouse-gas-reduction initiatives in North America,” said Scongack. “The closures have eliminated more than 30 megatonnes of annual greenhouse-gas emissions, which is equivalent to taking seven-million vehicles off Ontario’s roads.”

Between 2017 and 2064, the anticipated end-of-life of the Bruce Power units, clean nuclear, when compared to alternatives, will avoid between $12-billion and $63-billion in carbon costs that ratepayers would have to fund if this output were replaced by fossil fuels, based on a range of currently-contemplated carbon pricing.

For the average household, this is an avoided cost of between $2,700 and $14,000, through to 2064.